Hervé Cadiou

Hervé Cadiou obtained his PhD in 2001 in Rouen, France, working on the mechanisms behind olfactory transduction in fish. He then joined the department of Pharmacology at Cambridge University (UK) and work on the molecular mechanisms of pain in Peter McNaughton’s lab. Implementing electrophysiological techniques, he found that nitric oxide, a gaseous signalling molecule released upon inflammatory conditions could potentiate acid-mediated pain through a direct action on Acid-Sensing Ion Channels. Still in Peter McNaughton’s lab, Hervé Cadiou switched direction and went to study magnetoreception i.e. animals’ ability to detect and utilize the Geomagnetic field in order to perform navigational tasks. He was able to set a range of optical techniques in order to detect magnetite within biological tissues and with M. Winklhofer (LMU, Munich) a method was found to isolate candidate magnetoreceptor cells from fish olfactory epithelium. In 2009, he moves back to France as a research associate at CSGA in Dijon. He was then appointed an associate professor in neurophysiology at Strasbourg University in 2011. Hervé Cadiou is an associate member of the Royal Institute of Navigation.